Pazzo Blog - Part 2

Beard Bracket Play in: Rounds 13, 14

: Abraham Lincoln

: Colonel William Hardee

: Daniel Sickles

: Thomas Drayton

Click image to enlarge.

Remember, it is a matter of no importance that one of these fellows got his entire corps pointlessly destroyed by cannon fire at Gettysburg, killed his son-in-law in a duel and was censured for (repeatedly) consorting with prostitutes and one is Abraham Lincoln. It’s the beards that count.

Choose One.

9/29/2011 Leave a comment

Beard Bracket Play In: Rounds 10, 11, 12

: George William Curtis

: John Hay

: Justice David Davis

: Attorney General Caleb Cushing

: Horace Greeley

: Edwin Morgan

Click images to expand.

Choose One:

Choose One

9/22/2011 2 Comments

Beard Bracket Play in Rounds 8 and 9

: Stonewall Jackson

: Mansfield Lovell

: Benjamin Franklin Butler

: Samuel Heintzelman

Click image to enlarge.

and

9/16/2011 Leave a comment

Beard Bracket Play in Rounds (6,7)

: John Alexander McClernand

: General Benjamin Prentiss

: General David Hunter

: Felix Zollicoffer

Click image to enlarge

9/13/2011 1 Comment

Beards: My Greatx3 Grandfather Henry Sternberg

My mother just sent me this – just to show that my family’s beard interest runs deep…

9/11/2011 Leave a comment

Beard Bracket Play in Round (5)

As we continue to pare down to our 32 beard field (to meet the yet to be decided 32 beard field from the second half of the Civil War), I think it’s important to note that though, here at Pazzo, we are beard ecumenical, you are encouraged to be as subjective and judgmental as you want. If you hate mustaches, have at them; despise the mutton chop? have an irrational love of chin beards? Do what you feel.

: General Fitz-John Porter

: Major General Irvin McDowell

click on images to enlarge.

9/10/2011 Leave a comment

Beard Bracket Play in Round (4)

A three way, this time (I ran into Banks and his mustache and had to add him), vote for one; click on the images to enlarge:

: Colonel B.F Kelley

: John Pope

: Nathaniel Banks

9/9/2011 Leave a comment

Civil War Beard Bracket: Play in Round (3). Nelson vs. Rousseau

: William Nelson

: Senator Lovell Rousseau

Click on images to enlarge (and view the top of Rousseau’s head)

9/8/2011 2 Comments

Beard Bracket Play in Round: Morton vs. Jackson

: Oliver Morton

: Claiborne Jackson

Click image to enlarge.

votes also accepted via email (tom@pazzobooks.com), twitter (@pazzobooks), or telegraph.

9/7/2011 1 Comment

Beard Bracket I: The Play in Round. Beauregard vs. Harney

We’re halfway through the set of Lincoln books, so it seems a perfect time to unveil the first of the Beard Brackets. 48 beards made it through the selection process, 32 will be forced to “play in” to make the 32 beard field. Beards (and mustaches, sideburns, etc.) have been selected for aesthetic value, humorousness, overall quality, unruliness, and an x-factor (stateliness, if it’s a singular example of a beard type, etc.) but you’re free to go with your own criteria, gut feelings and indefensible predilections.

And we’re off:

: General Beauregard

: William Harney

Click image to enlarge

votes also accepted via email (tom@pazzobooks.com), twitter (@pazzobooks), or telegraph.

9/7/2011 2 Comments

Moveable Pictures in Feather & Fur

Dean & Son produced lovely moveable books starting in the 1850s – this is a nicely preserved example from around 1880. The tabs on the bottom cause two things to happen on each page (except for the owl whose wings are busted). Click any gallery image for a full screen view.







Shipping

8/25/2011 Leave a comment

Lohrmann’s Fabulous Lunar Map

In 1821, Wilhelm Gotthelf Lohrmann made observations on the moon that allowed him to produce his exquisite lunar chart (finalized in 1824). In 1878, 38 years after his death it was finally published by Dr. Julius Schmidt in 25 sections. In 1963 Johann Ambrosius Barth re-printed them, and here they are:

8/18/2011 Leave a comment

Liberia Herald

Two issues of the Liberia Herald – the first with a number of early accounts of local Chieftain Grando’s attack on Fish Town in early November, 1851 and the second, counter-interestingly, with mostly idealistic but non-specific articles on the future of Liberia. An interesting pair from the early days of this national paper in the first decade of independence – the author of a number of articles in the 1851 edition, Stephen Benson, served as the second president of Liberia from 1856-1865.

8/17/2011 Leave a comment

Nuit de Cléopatre

A few of Paul Avril’s lovely illustrations for Théophile Gautier’s Une Nuit de Cléopatre:

7/15/2011 Leave a comment

Lincoln: Spoons Butler, Burnside and Damn the Torpedoes!

: Frontis for volume 5 part 2

: Stephen Rowan

: Ambrose Burnside with signature

: General Quincy Gillmore

: Commander David Porter

: David Farragut (hand colored with signature)

: Benjamin Franklin Butler political cartoon “Bluebeard of New Orleans”

: General Schuyler Hamilton

: General Mitchell with signature

: Samuel Heintzelman

Benjamin Franklin Butler, pictured in the political cartoon above directed the capture of New Orleans and was then responsible for its administration. He had issued a number of curious orders, but this cartoon refers to Butler’s General Order No. 28 of May 15, that if any woman should insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a “woman of the town plying her avocation”. This order provoked protests from both sides as well as abroad, and led to his removal from command of the Department of the Gulf on December 17, 1862. He was nicknamed “‘Beast’ Butler” or alternatively “‘Spoons’ Butler,” the latter nickname derived for his alleged habit of pilfering the silverware of Southern homes in which he stayed.

Admiral David Faragut, who receives the rare honor of being in color, led the naval engagement The Battle of Mobile Bay, on August 5, 1864 where he entered into American folklore by possibly saying “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

7/14/2011 Leave a comment

Damned Polar Bears!

Never did an arctic expedition run into such trouble with polar bears as William Barent did in 1596 when he was stranded on Bear Island!

From J.H. Campe’s educational version of William Barents expedition, the great Dutch explorer who was trapped by the forming northern ice in 1596 and succumbed in 1597.

6/24/2011 Leave a comment

Pharmacopoeias and Alligators

I just got in a number of interesting 18th century pharmacopoeias (pictured here)

including both city editions (Paris, Amsterdam) and countrywide pharmacopoeias. The engraved title page for famously confused herpetologists Moyse Charas’ Pharmacopée Royale Galenique et Chymique shows a group bringing the pharmaceutical wonders of the world to the French court. What the lion and the alligator (?) are doing is a little more confounding.

6/24/2011 Leave a comment

Letter from Jefferson Davis re: Mr. Bland [from Abraham Lincoln: Extra-Illustrated, 1890]

“]

Jefferson Davis was the Secretary of War when this letter was written. He references a “Mr. Bland” and it’s written to the Commissioner of the Land Office, Joseph Wilson. Not too much to go on, but my best guess is that Mr. Bland is Richard Parks Bland, later a Democratic Congressman. He’d moved to Missouri at age 20 in 1855 and was setting up a law practice there with his brother. In later years he became known as “Silver Dick” for less exciting reasons than one might have hoped: he was a fierce and lifelong supporter of a bimetallic basis for US currency and enjoyed huge support among the silver miners.

6/22/2011 1 Comment

Lincoln: Jefferson Davis letter, The Battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, a few beards

: John Alexander McClernand [Matthew Brady photo]

: General Lloyd Tilghman photo

: Irvin McDowell

: George Bancroft with chops

: John Worden with signature

: 2 remnants from the US flag (one stars and blue, other red stripe) from the Monitor, March 1862

: Battle Between the Monitor and the Merrimac

: Frontis for Vol 5 part 1

: Letter from Jefferson Davis to Joseph Wilson (Commissioner of the Land Office) re: Mr. Bland. [Possibly relating to a silver scheme of Bland's?]

: Bombardment of Ports Walker and Beauregard, Port Royal Inlet

: Commander John Rodgers portrait

: Captain Charles Wilkes photo

: Lt. D.M Fairfax photo

: Simon Bolivar Buckner photo. Elected Governor of Kentucky after the war, his administration was ruined by the Hatfield-McCoy feud and his treasurer, James “Honest Dick” Tate ran off with $250,000.

: General Albert Pike with signature. The only Confederate General with a statue in D.C. He was pardoned by Freemason buddy Andrew Johnson.

: Sterling Price photo

6/22/2011 Leave a comment

Lincoln: Willie “Bull” Nelson, John “Pathfinder” Frémont, others

: Frontis for Vol 4 part 2

: William “Bull” Nelson. Impetuous and effective naval officer who rose to the rank of Major General. Murdered while protecting Louisville from Confederate attack.